because it is not knowledge, and because it contradicts the trustworthy narrators who stated the matter decisively and did not hesitate. This is an exceedingly clear matter, one about which no person granted knowledge and understanding can have any doubt. Consider, brother: if a group agreed in establishing that one person owed another a right, and further agreed that the amount of that right was, for example, five, except that one of them hesitated and said, “Five or six,” would any sensible person say that the right has not been established on the grounds that the one who hesitated is more trustworthy than those who did not hesitate?!
Therefore, in conclusion, I say to this beloved brother and to others among our beloved brothers: I sincerely hope that you will not occupy yourselves with writing about a field in which you have not yet matured, nor keep us occupied with responding to you when you write a response to me, even if it is in the form of questions and seeking to learn. The great undertaking in which I am engaged, “Bringing the Sunnah Close to the Ummah,” is often distracting me from it because of responses published in treatises, books, and journals by some of the enemies of the Sunnah—madhhab partisans, Ashʿarīs, Sufis, and others. This occupation alone leaves me no need to respond to inexperienced well-wishers, let alone others. Allah is the One whose help is sought, and upon Him is reliance.
2787 — “Whoever is afflicted by need and takes it to people will not have his need relieved. But whoever takes it to Allah, Allah will soon grant him sufficiency, either through a swift death or swift wealth.”
It was recorded by al-Tirmidhī (2327), al-Ḥākim (1/408), from whom al-Bayhaqī narrated it (4/196), al-Ṭabarī in Tahdhīb al-Āthār (1/13/12 and 13), al-Dūlābī in al-Kunā (1/96), Abū Yaʿlā in his Musnad (3/1286), and al-Baghawī in Sharḥ al-Sunnah (14/301/4109), through various chains from Bashīr ibn Salmān, from Sayyār—al-Baghawī adds: Abū al-Ḥakam—from Ṭāriq ibn Shihāb, from ʿAbd Allāh ibn Masʿūd, attributed to the Prophet, with this wording. Al-Tirmidhī said: “A good, authentic, singular hadith.” Al-Ḥākim said: